Kurita Minoru was born in Nagoya on July 4, 1948. As a junior high school student, he commenced helping his father in the family wood tub crafting cooper business. After graduating from high school, he and his brother continued in the family business, Nagoya Wood Barrels, Kurita Coopers. He regularly shows his wares at traditional handcraft displays at department stores across the nation, and has been focusing on maintaining the traditions, while developing new products. In 1999, he was the recipient of a Nagoya Traditional Industry Association Award, and in 2010 was certified by the National Lands and Forestry Department as a recognized woodcrafts and cooper artisan. Mr. Kurita has been heavily involved with the forming of the Aichi Prefectural Traditional Craftsman Organisation.

50 Years of Craft / この道一筋50年・・・

—Kurita San, how long have you been working as a traditional cooper?

栗田さんは、桶結師（おけゆいし）のお仕事をされて何年ですか？

49 years now. 49年になります。

—Why did you decide to become a cooper? 桶結師になったキッカケは？

My father was a cooper. I didn’t want to become a cooper at first, and so after graduating I experienced life briefly in a white shirt and necktie. At the time, both my parents and my brother were very busy with the family business. It didn’t seem right that I should want to work elsewhere, and so I started making tubs, barrels and pails alongside my parents and brother,…that was nearly 50 years ago now.

The Owari Nagoya Districts were Home to Many Craftsmen 尾張名古屋は、桶屋が栄えた場所だった

There’s only about 30 or 40 left across the nation now. I looked in the phone book, and most from my father’s era have closed their doors, and the majority of coopers these days only make barrels. There’s only about 5 traditional coopers left here in Nagoya. There used to be over 200, or so I heard. Just south of Nagoya Castle is an area called Okeya-Cho (Cooper-Town), where it seems coopers once flourished in old Japan.

Kiso Hinoki cypress, ..that’s a wonderful timber! They cut very high quality wood in the Kiso districts, and float it along the Kiso River to the Horigawa (Moat River). That’s where we used to get it from.